Grounds to Believe Read Online Free Page A

Could you transfer me, please?” The formal language, the politeness, felt stilted on her tongue.
    The woman rang her through, and Miriam dared to feel a little hope threaded through the mass of her built-up distrust and fear.
    “Human Resources.”
    “I’m looking for a deputy named Ross Malcolm who works there.”
    A clicking sound rattled in the background. “The only person by that name who’s worked here since I’ve been here transferred up to Seattle several years ago.”
    The flicker of hope died. Seattle was on the other side of the state. At the ends of the earth.
    “Did he go to a sheriff’s department there?” she asked faintly.
    “Nope. Seattle P.D. Anything else I can help you with?”
    “No.” Dispensing with politeness, Miriam hung up the pay phone a little harder than she had to.
    Seattle. Talk about finding a needle in a haystack. It would be less trouble to take the girl back with her. She was small, but even the little ones paid their way. She might make a good shill. God knew those eyes had made Miriam herself act completely out of character.
    Had forced her to make a promise she no longer wanted to keep.
     
    Rita Ulstad had agreed to meet Ross near a drooping Japanese maple on the hospital grounds. In front of them was the parking lot, scattered with cars. Ross turned as the petite nurse slid onto the bench beside him.
    “Ms. Ulstad?”
    Her face was so immaculately made up she could have passed for thirty. Fashionably mussed, her hair was tinted taffy-blond. “Call me Rita.” She looked him up and down. “You’re Ross Malcolm? The cop?”
    He crossed his denim-clad legs, and his heavy riding boots sank into the lawn. “A lot of my work takes me undercover.”
    “Wow. I guess I’ve never met anyone in plainclothes before.”
    “I clean up when I have to.” He smiled at her. “Harry Everett says you can tell me about Ryan Blanchard.”
    “Whatever you need to know. I’m past the point of professional discretion here. All I want is to see justice done and those people exposed for who they are.”
    “Okay…who are ‘those people’?”
    “The Blanchards? Or the Elect in general?”
    “Start with the big picture and work in. What’s your history with this group? What are they called—the Elect?”
    “As in ‘Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect.’ I don’t know how much you know about the Bible, but they use that verse as a recipe for justifying just about anything, let me tell you. Anyway, to get back to your question, I grew up in it. Spent thirty years in Gathering, three to four times a week. It’s mind control, plain andsimple.” The waving leaves of the Japanese maple flicked shadows across the baby-fine wrinkles in her skin. “They’re a cult. They tossed me out because I fell in love with someone they thought was unsuitable. It was that or give him up and spend the rest of my life in my correct but miserable marriage. There is no freedom of choice in the Elect, Ross. No second chances. You follow the rules or lose everything.”
    “What do you mean by everything?”
    “Friends, family, community support, everything that’s important.”
    “Did they abuse you?”
    She gave him a look hardened by resentment into implacability. “The worst kind of abuse is to deny another person their freedom.”
    Ross thought about that for a moment, about the haunted eyes of all those little kids. The real root of all evil. “How well do you know the Blanchards?”
    “Ryan’s dad, Owen, is an Elder so he’s well educated in mind control. The famous Blanchard charm is just a front. The whole town thinks Jesus has already come back, and is alive and well at Hamilton High.” Bitterness crackled in her tone.
    “He’s the principal there, isn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t the Outsider parents have a problem with that?”
    “Oh, I’m not saying he’s a bad administrator. He’s too smart to bring his beliefs to work in an obvious way. But he’s